SLEEPING GOLD UNDER THE RED MOUNTAIN
We stumbled upon Vesselina Nikolaeva’s work a week ago and immediately felt empathy with her project. We asked her to introduce us a little bit the project that deserves much attention and appreciation.
«Rosia Montana is a 2500 years old village in the mountains of western Romania. Rosia Montana is believed to be the largest European site of gold deposits. This area has been mined for at least two millennia, from the time of Caesar to the days of Ceausescu, and owes its name – ‘red mountain’ – to the streams of water turned red from toxic runoff produced by 2000 years of underfunded and uncontrolled gold mining.
The Romanian state-owned mining company, Minvest S.A., operated the mine from 1989 through spring 2006. Using outdated mining practices and dependent on state subsidies that did not meet EU competition, Minvest closed its operations as part of the negotiations paving the way of Romania’s accession to the EU. In a mono-industrial area like Rosia Montana, unemployment in rose to over 80%, many of the village’s 3000 inhabitants jobless and destitute unless mining continued under private ownership».
«The Canadian company Gabriel Resources, lawfully acquired the mining license in 1999 from the Romanian government, introducing their ambitious plan to build the largest open cast cyanide leach gold mine in Europe: ‘The Rosia Montana Project’. The project involves the resettlement and relocation of 1800 people living in 740 houses and 138 flats, as well as eight churches and connected cemeteries. This means that a total of 38 percent of the Rosia Montana communal area is to be affected by the new mining project. The Rosia Montana Project is a matter of intense controversy in Romania, though little is reported outside the Balkans. I have been following the story since 2002, when due to the strong protest, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) decided not to support the project. However Gabriel Recourses went ahead with private capital and to date, using the model ‘willing buyer/willing seller’ 98% of the homeowners in the community surrendered their properties».
«In the case of Rosia Montana the environmental concerns are real. The hills, valleys and rivers of Rosia Montana are in deplorable and dangerous conditions – ridden with arsenic, zinc and iron well above the legal limits, caused by the acid rock drainage from two millennia of mining. The Romanian Government has designated the aria as a ‘Disadvantaged Zone’ due to the high unemployment. Who will restore those lands if not Gabriel with its legally binding commitment to thorough environmental reclamation? A private gold mining operation, promising to ‘clean up the mess’ in exchange to the indicated recourses of 14.6 million ounces of gold and 64.9 million ounces of silver. In the spring of 2010 Gabriel acquired the long delayed environmental permit and the mining in Rosia Montana could begin in 2011».
«Over the years I have followed the developments around the Rosia Montana with interest, though its uncertain future kept me from initiating a photography project until now. However, given the latest developments in Romania I traveled in October of 2010 to this little aria in Transylvania and took my first photographs during the beginning of its metamorphosis from a region characterized by economic decline, environmental degradation, cultural distress and community anxiety into ‘the gold standard for mining developments in Europe and across the world’.»
© All copyright remains with photographer Vesslina Nikolaeva